Which app is friendlier for exports?

Kindle, by a wide margin. Every physical Kindle keeps a plain-text My Clippings.txt file. Apple Books stores everything in an internal SQLite database with no export button, so you have to work through the Notes → Share → Export as PDF flow one book at a time.

Yes, and lots of people do. Kindle for long-form nonfiction where highlights matter, Apple Books for fiction or purchases from Apple's store. Feed both into a memory tool and the two collections merge into one 'what you've read' library.

Do Apple Books highlights sync across my devices?

Yes — via iCloud, if you enable it. But the sync is inside Apple's ecosystem. It doesn't help you get the data out. That still requires the manual export step per book.

Which format is Konshus happiest with?

Either. The Kindle importer accepts My Clippings.txt, Kindle HTML notebook exports, and Apple Books text/HTML exports. Same parser, different format menu.

A dual-ecosystem guide · ~5 min read

Kindle vs Apple Books: Preserving a Reading Life Across Both

Most serious readers don't have one library. They have "the Kindle for airport nonfiction," "the iPad for anything with images," and "the paperback beside the bed." The Kindle-vs-Apple question is rarely which app to use — it's how to keep the highlights portable when you use both.

Two ecosystems, two philosophies

Kindle was designed for readers who buy books elsewhere too. Sideload EPUB. Grab your highlights off the device as plain text. Amazon's ecosystem is walled but the walls have plenty of doors.

Apple Books was designed for readers who buy books from Apple. The reading experience is nicer, the export experience is worse. Highlights live in an internal database that no export button reaches. The Notes-pane → Share → PDF workflow is a workaround, not a feature.

If you use only one, the choice is largely aesthetic. If you use both and care about the highlights, plan the export path before your third bookcase full of highlights piles up.

Kindle export in 90 seconds

Plug the Kindle into a computer with USB.
Open the mounted drive → documents/My Clippings.txt.
Copy to your computer. That single file has every highlight from every book on that device.

Apps-only highlights (iPhone / Android Kindle app) live at read.amazon.com/notebook. No bulk export, so you copy per book or use a scraper.

Apple Books export in 5 minutes per book

On Mac: Books → open a book → Notes pane (icon top-right).
Share → Export as PDF.
Open the PDF → Select All → Copy → paste into a .txt file.

Community shortcuts (search "Books to Markdown") automate this per book but still can't bulk-export. Do the books that mattered most first.

Never lose your AI again

Konshus is one way to solve this — a persistent memory vault and portable persona that follows you across ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and whatever ships next.

Meet Konshus

Merging the two into one memory

Konshus doesn't care which app produced the file. Drop Kindle's My Clippings.txt into /vault/import/kindle and your Apple Books text exports into /vault/import/apple-books. Both land as highlight artifacts; both feed the same distillation. The recurring ideas across your reading — not just per book — become atoms your Konshus can quote back.

The dual-ecosystem reader ends up with one merged library that survives both Amazon and Apple.

Frequently asked

Frequently Asked Questions

One library, two ecosystems, one memory

Merge Kindle and Apple Books highlights in Konshus. The recurring ideas across everything you've read become memory that talks back.